


The Mark for Everyone's Souls

by siderealOtaku



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canonical Character Death, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, minato has all the bonds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 14:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5460200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siderealOtaku/pseuds/siderealOtaku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minato Arisato's body is covered in marks. His mother called him blessed, until she saw the pitch-black skull on his left hip. "Death!" she screamed. "He is Death's soulmate!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mark for Everyone's Souls

Minato Arisato’s body is covered in tattoos. 

Most prominent among them is a gun, taking up the majority of his back. It is a deep, murky blue-green, a color that reminds the boy of late-night thunderstorms. The gun seems to radiate a quiet sense of strength, of solidarity. When he gets angry or agitated or scared, he has only to brush his fingers across it and calm is quick to return. 

The rest are smaller, scattered every-which-way over the pale expanse of his skin, a riot of shapes and colors. A many-pointed leaf in rusty brown. A pair of crossed kendo swords, silver and wickedly sharp. An arrow, a camera, a sewing needle and, possibly strangest of all, a canine pawprint. 

He has few memories of his parents, and most that do remain are directly connected to his tattoos. Crying into his mother’s arms when his first-grade classmates called him “freak” and “unnatural”. His father explaining what tattoos meant – he has to ask for the definition of “soulmate,” but when his father tells him _(an important person, a person who leaves their mark on your life just as you do on theirs)_ his normally stern face lights up with an angelic smile. His father and his mother show him their matching marks with pride, and he thinks about what his life would be like if he was as happy with every one of his soulmates as his parents are together, and his first-grade brain can’t quite do the math but he figures that’s a whole lot of happiness. 

He soon learns that his marks are different in other ways than just their abundance. When he touches them, he can sense things – hear the clatter-clash of swords or smell the hot salty odor of ramen or feel an expanse of silk beneath his fingertips. Only two of his marks bring with them nothing, no scent or sight or sound, just a dull, empty numbness, like he is touching a scar. 

One is a heart, simple and cartoonish like a child’s drawing, etched over the approximate patch of skin covering the real organ. The other is a skull, blank-eyed and grinning, nestled in the plane of his left hipbone. 

While his other tattoos are a riot of colors, reds and greens and oranges and silvers, these two are dark, featureless, _black._

His mother sees the skull one day when he tears his pajama pants on the edge of the counter and she insists on sewing them up while he waits in the kitchen, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, unclothed from the waist down. She goes to hand him back his pants and freezes, blood draining from her face as she is unable to stifle a gasp of horror. 

She says nothing, only sends him back up to his room, but he creeps down the stairs and presses his ear against the door of his father’s study and he hears her words, as clear as day: 

_“I saw Death,”_ she says, nearly hysterical, _“He is Death’s soulmate!”_

The next day, his parents are torn from his side forever. He sits in the hospital, shivering in the mint-green gown, the fingers of his left hand compulsively rubbing the skull tattoo, feeling nothing at all. 

XXX

“Oh, pardon me,” Kirijo-senpai says too calmly as the coffee practically flies from her hand, soaking through both his school uniform jacket and the shirt beneath it. The welcome breakfast the residents of Iwatodai Dorm have tried to put on for him is immediately plunged into chaos.

“Akihiko, go bring him one of your spares,” the heiress demands. She tugs at Minato’s jacket sleeve, indicating that he should remove his jacket and shirt. He does so reluctantly, prepared for the usual combination of disgust, pity and inappropriate questions. 

It never comes. Kirijo-senpai fixates only on the large gun tattoo, a small, satisfied smile gracing her refined face. “Well, that confirms it,” she says. He doesn’t quite understand until Yukari offers to take off her shirt to show him hers and Sanada-senpai boisterously informs her that that’s not necessary, he’ll do it instead. 

“You all…?” he asks. 

They nod, and that night when his power awakens he greets it not with fear or reserve but with joy at the knowledge that he really is meant to be a member of this team. 

XXX

After living so many years of his life without meeting a single one of his myriad soulmates, it’s almost overwhelming to encounter so many of them in such quick succession. His life goes from achingly empty to almost unbearably full as he matches mark after mark to a face. He touches his marks as he lies in bed, discovering that the sensations each bring grow clearer and clearer as he actually interacts with the person. The crossed kendo swords bring to his mind Kaz’s laugh after he’d finally beaten him in a match. The small running figure practically glows with Yuko’s newfound determination to reach her goals. And he can’t tell if the regret he feels when he brushes fingertips across the yen symbol is President Tanaka’s or his own. 

Only the two black tattoos, the heart and the skull, remain as mysterious as always. 

XXX 

A guilty feeling creeps into his heart as he watches Akihiko and Mitsuru casually tangle their fingers together as they sit at the big table in the lounge, engrossed in exam prep books. Akihiko wears a soul mark proudly on the back of each hand, Mitsuru on the left and Shinjiro on the right. He’s even got the same marks printed on his boxing gloves. He had explained to Minato once that it was so he would never forget, even during the most dangerous of battles, that his romantic and platonic soulmates were watching over him and lending him their strength. 

Minato knows he is lucky, feels his friends’ affection pulsing through his veins and crawling across his skin. He knows it is selfish of him to wish that just one of his soulmates would want the kind of relationship that Akihiko and Mitsuru had. Chihiro and Fuuka had had feelings for him, but both had ultimately moved on. 

He wonders how he can feel so full of love and yet so alone at the same time. 

XXX

“You _do_ have my mark,” an anguished Junpei shouts, jabbing his finger at the flower tattoo on the girl’s upper arm. Her long, elegant dresses had hidden it well, but the hospital gown no longer allows the Strega member to conceal it. 

“Soul marks are just a distraction from our purpose,” Chidori responds, but there is hesitation in her voice, as though she is beginning to doubt long-held beliefs for the very first time. 

XXX

Ken’s skin was smooth and mark-less, except for the murky green gun at his back. After October 4th, after he regained his resolve and strengthened his Persona, he quietly asked Akihiko to accompany him on an important errand. 

When he returns, he has had two tattoos inked onto his body: his mother’s name over his heart and an axe on his lower back, just below the gun. 

XXX

Fuuka shows Minato a small sun on the inside of her left wrist. “I noticed Natsuki had the same when one of her bracelets slipped a bit one day. I was so scared, back then…I thought it would only make her and the others bully me more.” Now the quiet girl’s smile widened as she thinks of her platonic partner. 

“Do you believe that marks are always a good thing, in the end?” Minato asks, thinking of the skull.

“Yes,” she responds with uncharacteristic determination. “I do think so.” 

XXX

Every member of SEES has a paw print somewhere on their body. Minato often sees one or another of them looking at or stroking that particular mark, a contented smile on their face. 

Not all soulmate relationships are complicated. 

XXX

When Elizabeth asks to see his soul marks, he complies without thinking. He has become accustomed to the odd way in which she views the world, and he can’t imagine that she has a judgmental bone in her body. 

She reacts, as she does to everything, with curiosity. She touches the tattoos and asks him questions about the people they represent. Usually he would find this invasive, but he understands that she’s not being rude or cruel, she just wants knowledge. 

They spend a long time together that day. Her skin is as white, smooth and mark-less as finest porcelain. 

XXX

When Chidori passes, Junpei leans down and presses a kiss to the flower mark on her arm. 

XXX

Yukari and Mitsuru follow Ken’s example, returning to the dorm one day with their fathers’ names tattooed across their hearts. 

XXX

There are three marks on Aigis’s back. They look nothing like tattoos on human flesh. Instead, they seem to have been carved into the metal, like an elaborate filigree pattern on the hilt of a sword. 

“I was only the second Anti-Shadow Weapon to display the marks,” she explains nonchalantly. “They considered locking me up. I believe it was the Chairman who dissuaded them.” 

After a long silence, she continues. “My…developers… wished to have the marks burned away, or merely replace my back-piece. The plan was scrapped when I displayed a negative response.” Minato shudders to think what a ‘negative response’ from Aigis might look like. 

Below the SEES gun is a small shape that looks like the horns of some kind of bovine animal. “I had thought it might be Yukari-san, due to her Persona, but it seems I was incorrect.” 

Minato’s throat goes dry as he observes the last mark: a simple heart, like a child’s cartoony drawing.

He doesn’t speak. He merely removes his shirt and shows her the matching mark. She responds with a pleased gasp, far more human-like a sound than she had been capable of producing when they first met. 

When his fingertips brush across her Papillon Heart, the formerly black mark explodes into a brilliant red. From that day on, when he touches the tattoo, he can feel the hummingbird-quick pulse of Aigis’s heart beneath his hand. 

XXX

Mitsuru turns Ikutsuki’s corpse on its side with the toe of her boot and uses her rapier to slash open the back of his coat. When she sees the wide, unmarked expanse of skin, she makes a small noise of satisfaction. 

XXX

Not all of his soulmates showed him their marks. Mutatsu and President Tanaka were far too reserved and secretive to let that kind of knowledge slip. Others gladly and willingly reveal their shared connection. Bunkichi and Mitsuko draw up their sleeves, proudly displaying his persimmon leaf directly underneath the fruit that represented their son. Akinari unbuttons his collar to reveal a pen scrawling the words “happily ever after” across his collarbone. Maiko complains that her mark is just a circle until he points out that it’s a ball of takoyaki. 

He notices the cursor on Ms. Toriumi’s wrist and considers greeting her someday with a “Hello, Maya-san.” He never goes through with it.   
XXX

The night that the strange boy who sometimes sat on the edge of Minato’s bed said his goodbyes, he didn’t take off his pajama-like outfit. Minato isn’t sure if the boy even _could_ take off his clothes. Instead, he awkwardly rubs and prods at his hip. The blue-haired leader of SEES rests his own hand on the corresponding spot. They don’t exchange a word on the topic, but they understand each other perfectly well. 

Minato wonders if maybe the skull mark might change color or react after this, like Aigis’s had. He is disappointed –it remains as black and silent as always. 

XXX

When Jin and Takaya plunge from the bridge together, Minato is not surprised to see that the marks on their entwined hands do not match. Sometimes, circumstances can form a more powerful bond than mere flesh. 

XXX

When they change Shinjiro’s body into his tuxedo for the burial, they realize but do not comment that he had a mark for each and every one of them. 

XXX

Elizabeth’s next request is to take her to a tattoo parlor. He escorts her to the same one that Ken and Mitsuru and Yukari had used. To his surprise, she emerges with an entire sleeve, made up of interlocking names in flowing black script – “Igor” and “Theodore” and “Margaret” and his own, “Minato,” and many that he does not recognize. 

“We attendants witness so many guests passing through the Room,” she says in a voice that is, for her, almost shy. “I…I want to start remembering them better.” 

XXX

When Minato sees the black skull on Ryoji Mochizuki’s hip, he gasps much as his own mother did when she had first seen his mark. “You’re…” 

The boy blushes red and looks down, winding his scarf through his fingers. “…Your soulmate, yeah,” he finally says, quiet, the most subdued Minato has ever seen him. “Or one of them, anyway.” 

For a moment, Minato is paralyzed with questions, with indecision. What does this mean for him, for them, for the world? Why had that mark shown up again, when its former owner had ceased to exist? Who _was_ Ryoji? _What_ was he? 

And then the pale boy crawls into Minato’s lap and presses a kiss to the mark on the blue-haired boy’s hip, and for the first time in his entire life, the spot floods with sensation – and Minato makes up his mind. 

He hauls Ryoji up for a proper kiss, leaving all talk of mysterious boys and reappearing marks behind. Maybe he is Death’s soulmate, but Death is gentle and sweet and absolutely adorable when he blushes and maybe that skull mark wasn’t such a curse after all. 

XXX

The skull remains black, but when Minato touches it, he can feel the brush of Ryoji’s lips against his sensitive skin, a beautiful, too-brief moment preserved forever.


End file.
